Long-term ecological studies' practices and goals for trainees

We created a survey for the other authors in the 2024 Ecology Letters
special issue on very long-term ecological studies about their practices
and goals for trainees. We received 27 responses from researchers around
the world studying a broad range of organisms across ecosystems. In more
than half of the responding programs, undergraduate students collect,
curate, and analyze data, as well as develop research questions, present
at conferences, and contribute to writing scientific papers. Unlike our
program, which primarily recruits from one university, other long-term
studies often target a variety of institutions (79% of respondents). About
half reported targeted recruitment of students from marginalized
identities and a similar proportion paid students for their work. Students
were slightly more likely to collaborate with a cohort of other students
(3.8 in 1-5 Likert scale) and have peer cohort building activities (3.6 in
1-5 Likert scale). When asked to rank the helpful characteristics of
long-term studies to undergraduate students, top choices included “links
between research, internship, classes”, “extensive professional networks”,
“rich data”, and “robust logistics”. The rank of “paid salaries” was
split, with about a third of the programs ranking it least helpful to
students but the other third of programs ranking it either as the first or
second most helpful attribute of long-term programs. Based on comments
related to funding, the low salary ranking might be associated with
student funding opportunities available through university grants or
independent fellowships. Overall, this suggests the most impactful
transformation long-term studies can make is to advocate for paying
trainees in future grant proposals.